


Looking Glass

by eidolon



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eidolon/pseuds/eidolon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki retreats to a private place in the mountains to come to terms with the knowledge that he is a Jotunn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> I prefer the spelling Jotunn and Jotunheimr, because that is the way I learned them when I began studying Norse mythology.

Arriving in a desolate section of the Rockies, where humans did not tend to venture, he tucked his phone and watch into a small pocket of space, along with the other Midgardian vestiges of his life. Loki enjoyed upgrading; he did not enjoy replacing. After a moment's thought, he added the rest of his clothing to the pocket. Snow was hell on silk.

The wind howled a long, lonely note as it tore through the rocks, dragging the heat from his body and pulling the pink from his skin. The dark blue spread across his flesh, from the tips of his fingers toward his heart and over his face.

His fingers moved slowly over his cheek and moved upward, tracing the ridges that had formed on his skin as he changed. The shape felt like magic, but he was uncertain of its province. Loki could no longer feel the cold, and the wind was refreshing. His night vision was much more acute than he had ever imagined it could be, and Loki watched the snow gathering into a drift as the sun finished slipping beneath the earth. Time passed. He felt the moon rise, but the heavy cloud cover concealed it.

When the blizzard came, it screamed in his ears and brought torrents of snow down on the mountain. He lay himself down on the drift and felt lulled by the sounds of the wind and the softness of the fresh snow. It felt as welcoming as a warm feather bed was to his Aesir shape.

He watched the clouds move for a long time and let himself be lost in the moment. In Jotunheimr, there were no distractions from the weather when it raged. They had seen no halls similar to the ones in Asgard, where men would gather and drink and tell tales long into the night. It was a ragged, stark country. But the wind seemed to speak words to him like this, and the snow gathered over him like a blanket. He had intended to think on things, but this was more pleasant. The wind drew ticklish patterns in the snow, and its howling became a lullaby.

When Loki woke, a thick layer of snow had gathered atop him and a few shafts of sunlight were breaking through the clouds. The sun gave no heat, and he found himself grateful for that. He had purposefully chosen a place that anticipated severe weather this day. He intended to learn to face this part of himself and integrate it, to make it a source of strength and usefulness, and never again be a horror or something for which he felt shame.

What did they do, in Laufey's country, where the wind sung mothers' songs and there were few buildings distinguishable from the towering columns of ice? The popular opinion in Asgard held that they were savages, who knew nothing of music and art, that their country held no civilisation. Loki did not believe that could be true. His father -- Odin, he corrected himself -- had said he was taken from a temple. To have a temple meant to have a form of worship, but there was nothing in the palace's great library that spoke of what the Jotnar might worship.

The clouds flickered over the sun; the winds were still strong in the upper levels of the sky and they moved the clouds swiftly. The sunlight that fell on him and the bright ground was occasionally dappled by the shifting skies. He took a long, slow breath, inhaling the sharp scent of fresh snow and the almost metallic tang of the thin air.

Perhaps they worshipped the beauty of this nearly-silent world. The space between storms, and the wild chaos of blizzards. He had not heard of any wars occurring between their realm and others, beyond the longstanding hatred that had endured from time immemorial to the present and the punctuations of battles between the Aesir and Jotnar.

Loki arranged a seat for himself against the snowdrift and recalled Odin's words: _Abandoned. Suffering. Left to die. Laufey's son._

He was unwanted. The recollection came to him sharp enough to make him flinch. Unclaimed by either father, except through political machinations. Loki could have accepted it from Odin if he had been told when he was young, if he had not spent countless years enmeshed in the lies he was told. It was as good a plan as any, if Odin were truly set on peace, but Loki disliked being used under the cover of "love." He wound his arms around himself in a childish gesture of self-comfort, snarling at himself for doing so, but unable to stop it.

He summoned the memory of one of the songs sung in the darkest nights of winter in Asgard, a quiet melody with the notes plucked sharp and brittle as ice. They would ring in the hall when everyone had become quiet and was carefully examining the contents of their tankards. The words were sad, low.

 _If I follow you now,  
Maiden, my maiden, oh,  
If I follow you now,  
Will I ever find my way home?  
Maiden, my maiden, oh,  
You lead me running_

It even quieted his brother. There were few men who had never felt lost, whether it was in love, or in a storm.

His brother didn't know about this. Loki was certain. Thor was bad at secrets, and this was the worst secret of them all; he would have simply been incapable of carrying on all of these years as he had done if he had known. But mother -- mother _must_ know, since he had not arrived from her womb. And she had never said a word.

In her heart, Loki knew bitterly, she must have thought she was sparing him pain. Unlike father, she had never shown the kind of favouritism that Odin seemed incapable of getting through an evening without showering on Thor. Disgusted with his father, and disgusted with the way his heart seemed to twist itself into shreds whenever he thought about his parents and his brother, he forced his arms to loosen and his hands to unclench. He flexed his fingers slowly; ice had built around them he was thinking, sharp with spikes.

Easy as it was for him to form fire and illusions, ice should be no great feat, he thought as the remainder of it broke from his skin. He bent his will toward forming a sharp, vicious dagger and experimented with different grips. It had a different weight and balance than the knives he ordinarily used. He changed its shape, changing the balance to resemble his usual knives, and threw it at one of the rocks.

Standing, shaking some of the snow away from his joints so that it would not impair his movement, he threw ice knives at the rocks until he was satisfied with a design. Next he practised speed and control and made his minor adjustments until the ice would appear in his hands as quickly, if not more so, than the knives he ordinarily pulled from pockets of space. He would never need worry about running out of ice.

This was all well and good: but it would need testing on a suitable victim, but opportunities invariably presented themselves for such things. Cattle, perhaps. The Midgardians already accepted that bizarre things would happen to their cattle, so leaving them dismembered or frozen in a field wouldn't do more than alert the local alien chasers. He shrugged slightly at the thought, dismissing it and filing it away in his to-do list.

Loki stretched, looking at the blue flesh of his arms as he raised them over his head and sighed. Jotunheimr had been destroyed by the war, almost completely. The broken ruins that remained told no clear story about the culture they had had before Odin took the Casket.

His father had said "exposed." Being a warlike species, they only wanted the best, then. And Loki had been born small. Well-formed, but small. Too small to grow into a proper Jotunn. Was Laufey ashamed, then? Did he recognise his son? These were difficult thoughts and his heart wrenched, even as he told himself it did not matter. He threw another volley of ice knives, unsure which father he wished to impale, along with his perfect brother. Whether or not Loki was a Jotunn, or simply a small Aesir, he was unfit compared to Thor. Thor, whom anyone would be proud to call _son._ Not thin, scheming Loki, with his magic and books and plots within plots. He lived too much in his mind, and both realms prized warriors, tall, broad men who could destroy anything in their paths with naught more but weapon and shield. Thor's companions were skeptical of Loki's magic, despite how many times it had saved them on their adventures.

A fan-blade of fire leapt from his fingers toward the rock, ending in a conflagration that melted all of the broken ice knives beneath. He wanted -- had wanted for years -- to throw it in the faces of the damned Warriors Three and see their skin blacken and peel away from the bones. The stone took the punishment he could not heap upon them for their mocking smiles whenever they saw him and Thor wasn't looking. When his temper had eased, there was a melted pit in the snow. It was only mildly satisfying.

Loki sat again and drew his knees up, less out of a sense of chill than the pain in his chest when he thought of his brother loving _them_ , and approving of _them_ , and the way they all laughed so easily together, and how they fell silent whenever Loki was in earshot. He traced delicate lines in the air with his fingertips, forming threads of ice that curved like molten glass. Little creatures, fanciful in their designs, took shape.

A graceful stag was first, made with such a set of antlers that Loki added a base to it to keep it from tipping. Next a pair of rabbits, one raised up on its hind legs, joined the stag, and Loki added rocks and a pine tree with feathery branches, drawn with frost. When the scene was finished and he had added many creatures of no Midgardian design to the assortment, he placed them all on small smoothed places in the rock he leaned against. Some particularly intrepid or stupid mountain climber would be painfully confused if they survived the wind that rolled down the slope as inexorable as an avalanche.

Loki rubbed his eyes and examined the blue tint of his hands. He instinctively found it loathsome, as did any Asgardian, because the Jotunn had long been their enemies and similar hands had stolen the lives of many good men. But these slender, tapered fingers were his, and they gave his magic life, as each subtle gesture bent the nine worlds to his whims. Energy crackled between his fingers. He had never heard of a Jotunn who could use anything but ice magic. These hands of his were skilled at any form of magic that he chose to study. If he found a subject difficult, he did little else but delve into it deeper and deeper until it was mastered. He would not be defeated by some aspect of his best talent, much as his brother never shied away from physical challenges. They would both die trying.

 _Exposed._ The word needled him again, conjuring images of himself as a baby, laying out in the elements and wailing -- for he would not have learned to always be silent, as he did later -- and Laufey ignoring him, everyone ignoring him until Odin had come, and saw a political benefit to saving him. _That's all I am,_ he thought, desolate. _A tool in someone's hand._ Ice formed spikes along his arms and splintered when he shifted, only to regrow. He would be no man's tool now. Not anymore. Not ever again.

He would show Odin.


End file.
